


paper-thin plans

by kathillards



Category: Power Rangers Beast Morphers
Genre: F/M, Missing Moments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 01:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21235625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: He’s at the pier one of the seven separate nights she finds her way there. She hates him for that.





	paper-thin plans

**Author's Note:**

  * For [valkyrierising](https://archiveofourown.org/users/valkyrierising/gifts).

> happy halloween!! this turned out kinda sad i'm sorry but i know you love your villainesses being complex and feeling emotions and kissing heroes so i hope you like it <3

_my heart, my hips, my body, my love  
tryna find a part of me that you didn’t touch_

.

Phantom touches in the middle of the night keep her awake more often than she would like. None of them are bad; all of them are soft or tender or warm or fierce or desperate. All of them are thumb imprints on skin that shouldn’t feel so much like skin anymore, shaking bones that should be code by now.

“It’s ridiculous that we still have to sleep,” she mutters to Blaze.

Scrozzle, working on his machines nearby, pipes up with, “That’s the downside to making avatars out of humans. You will retain your human bodies and its needs.” He goes on to grumble something about how Evox should _only_ work with robots and cyborgs, but she’s tuned him out.

Blaze only shrugs. “Doesn’t bother me.”

Of course it doesn’t. He never had a bad dream in his human life. Why should they start now?

Roxy lies awake on the pathetic little mattress rescued from the junkyard of the Cyber Dimension, and when she drifts away, her mind is full of soft hands, brown eyes, a smile so rare and earnest that it makes her human heart break around the coding.

The first time Ravi kissed her, it was by the pier in the quiet evening light. Something about that feels ironic now, remembering a moment so tender and simple when everything in her mind—in her code—screams for a fight. More ironic that it was the same place he had broken up with her.

That shouldn’t still hurt, but it does somehow. A phantom pain sneaking a tendril through her cold cybernetic heart.

She thinks she would hate Roxy—the original Roxy, the one lying frozen in sleep in a chamber somewhere. Soft, warm, sweet Roxy who barely had a bad thought in her life. Who only wanted to save the world, who wore her heart on her sleeve, who trusted without fear and loved without ruthlessness.

Roxy hates her—hates her hold on this broken coding, her hold on her should-be-perfect mind. How she worms her way into her thoughts and keeps her pinned in a vortex of Ravi-and-Roxy and kisses and wishes and wanting. How she refuses to surrender to the cybernetics, even though she has no reason still to hang on.

Not as much as she hates Ravi, but close.

He’s at the pier one of the seven separate nights she finds her way there. She hates him for that too.

“What’s the matter, lover boy?”

Ravi whirls, hand going for his morpher. Roxy rolls her eyes—as if she has time to waste fighting him. A ranger without his team is pathetic. Ravi without his team is extra pathetic. All he does is stare at her with those big, brown eyes, like he’s too astonished to do anything useful. He probably is.

“What are you doing here?” he demands.

Roxy doesn’t have an answer, so she doesn’t give him one.

Instead, she walks forward, past him entirely, all the way to the end of the pier, as if she couldn’t care less about his presence. And it’s true. She couldn’t care less.

Some part of Roxy, though, does care. So when he follows after her like some stupid puppy, she doesn’t do the sensible thing, which is punch him in the stomach.

“I asked you a question.” His voice is like he’s trying to be firm and resolute, but it breaks halfway through the sentence.

Roxy rolls her eyes. “What do you think I’m doing here? Plotting to destroy the world?”

“Well, yeah.”

“And what are you gonna do about it?”

Ravi’s gaze is warm on the side of her face, although she refuses to look at him in case the other Roxy decides it’s a good time to break through and do something stupid, like try to kiss him.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “Depends on what you’re plotting, I guess.”

Roxy huffs out an annoyed breath. “Honestly? It’s her fault.”

Ravi blinks at her. “Her… who?”

“Roxy,” she mutters. “She’s the reason I come out here. And you know something?” The words won’t stop coming now, as if saying Roxy’s name had triggered an avalanche. “I don’t even know what she saw in you. I have all her memories. You and her? Makes no sense.”

She means for the words to be biting, but instead of looking hurt, Ravi draws back in thoughtfulness.

“You have all her memories?”

Roxy waves a hand. “Don’t worry. I try not to look at them. You guys were such an obnoxious couple. No wonder Blaze wanted to kill you.”

Ravi stares at her in utter bemusement. “Blaze didn’t like us?”

“He didn’t like either of you.” Roxy shrugs. “He likes me better now, I guess. Since we’re both…”

“Evil?”

“I was gonna say _cool_.”

“Evil isn’t cool.”

He says it so solemnly that she almost, _almost_ cracks and starts laughing in his face.

“You have to be the most annoying person I’ve ever seen,” Roxy says instead. “How can you not tell when someone doesn’t like you? And how could you break up with someone who actually _did_ like you, for whatever stupid reason?”

Ravi’s eyes furrow, his gaze intent as he surveys her. She wishes he would stop, or at least look out at the pier or something. Just staring at her makes her feel like he’s about to do something and she’s not going to like it at all.

“I shouldn’t have broken up with you,” he says finally.

Roxy whips her head around. “I’m not her.”

“Right.” But he doesn’t sound like he believes that. “Well, she’s not here, so… I can only apologize to you.”

“I don’t want your stupid apology,” she snaps. “It means nothing to me.”

“But you said you have her memories,” Ravi points out. “So… it has to mean something. If you’re thinking about it that much.”

Roxy stares at him for a minute, unable to come up with any useful retort or counter to his logic. Hadn’t she come out here because her memories wouldn’t quit taunting her? Wasn’t Roxy such a huge part of her somehow that she hadn’t just shot Ravi at first glance?

She crosses her arms, coming to a decision. If Roxy wouldn’t shut up in her head, then she would deal with it. She could deal with anything. Even blue rangers with annoying hopeful looks on their faces.

“Okay, then,” she says slowly. “Fine. Pretend I’m her. What’s your apology?”

Ravi takes a deep breath and Roxy has a sudden feeling of dread that he’s actually been planning for this—that he’s written this out in his head over and over, even though she’s not the right girl for the moment at all.

“I’m sorry I broke up with you because of those stupid rules,” he says in a rush. “I loved you—I _love_ you. It was stupid to let being a ranger come in between that. And then you got taken away, and I guess the universe was punishing me for it anyway. So maybe I deserved that. And all the other stuff. But if I had another chance, I wouldn’t waste it. I wouldn’t let you get away again. Not this time.”

Roxy knows this heart isn’t her own, but the knowledge alone doesn’t stop it from racing. “This time?”

Ravi’s gaze fixes on her with such burning intensity that she almost forgets he’d been talking to a different girl—the girl he wished she was.

Maybe he’d meant to say _next time_. Maybe he was thinking about the future if his Roxy ever woke up. Maybe he was thinking of her and only her.

It doesn’t matter. Or it does matter even if she won’t let it.

Ravi presses a hand to her face, so gentle as though he stands a chance at hurting her, and kisses her. The instinct to fight him doesn’t hit her at all. Maybe it’s the real Roxy taking over. But maybe it’s not.

She kisses him back, hard and longing for something not her own. Something beyond her code. Her arms slide around his shoulders effortlessly, a motion she’s done a million times before—but not like this. Not as this.

She can’t tell if it feels at all different from her memories. She can’t tell if she’s cold or too hot, if she even knows how to kiss right, or if it’s her phantom memories taking over. But Ravi kisses her and he keeps kissing her and he doesn’t let go until she does, until she’s gasping for air like she’s human.

Roxy pushes him as soon as she remembers where she is, the chilly winds of the pier hitting her like a slap in the face. She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be near him. She shouldn’t be doing any of this, saying any of this, acting like this.

But the knowledge alone isn’t enough to get her feet to move.

“Sorry,” Ravi says finally, his voice quiet and sort of pathetic. “I didn’t…”

“Shut up,” Roxy says, and hesitates a moment—just a moment—over kissing him again before she manages to turn on her heel and stomp away.

Better to leave now, before it gets worse, she thinks. Better to leave before he did.

The dreams don’t come that night, and somehow, it’s the way she misses them that aches almost more than the kiss.


End file.
